A Serious Talk With My Fiancé | Getting A Prenup

welcome back to the iced coffee hour and today we got two really special guests the first one is judge von debe you may have seen her on tv she's a judge who specializes in divorce cases and child support payments of all thing and second we have my lovely girlfriend macy welcome to the iced coffee house two polar opposites here we have the relationship then we have what happens when relationships go wrong and we got jack yep so we got the whole spectrum guys we got marriage we got dating and we got single so we're going to talk about how expensive having a girlfriend is graham do you want to start yeah i don't really think we yeah yeah so so first thing for keeping your pet girlfriend is that you got to make sure she has food we do love food otherwise we get cranky lots of naps are important um you know all those things pretty much anything you need to take care of a girlfriend you can find at petco petco yeah you shop there uh no macy does she buys her own food there that's what you know it was funny when we first came out with our first video everyone was like graham girlfriends are so expensive and that was the the time in my life where like it was all about frugality and people were like do you know how much this is going to cost and when you really look at the cost it's not it's not bad i mean for you though right because you take girls on you know i will took let's say i'm not that expensive dates what was an ideal date when you were first getting started in this just well with macy's overall in general yeah well it was bad let's hear it man oh no i'm sure macy has some experiences here too no because when graham and i first started dating all of his friends were like oh he actually like takes you out and stuff so i've heard it's pretty bad but i never experienced it because i guess graham must have really liked me yeah one of my first dates i'll never forget was in high school and i i remember i went to the cheesecake factory because they had these nachos i'd get them with my buddy nick and they were eight dollar nachos that were huge like the cheesecake factory report and we just split it and uh but i used to bring my own uh soda like you know i'd have a soda every now and then back then but i'd bring my own and just ask for a cup of ice so i didn't have to pay the three dollars it and you did that on a date yes and what did your date think about it i think i think we didn't really have a second date i think we kind of had like a pseudo shoot i thought about it through a friend group and so it was like the second date was more of like a forced group hangout uh i think it's fine i didn't see any issue and saved a lot of money yeah okay as a girl what would you think of a guy did that um yeah i just i feel like it's not a good look because i i don't know i feel like then you're kind of jipping the servers a little bit because like the server is making money on everything that you're ordering so just kind of look at that and that would be my thought but um i just think you probably found someone who matched your energy a little bit or it might have just been cheaper not to have a soda perhaps then maybe just have a water that might have been the smarter way to go but you really need that soda that sounded like a performative thing it's like you bring this soda to show oh look how thrifty yeah i also oh the cheesecake factory also had like five dollar parking and so i parked at the convenience store next door and walked over save the save the parking was that did you have the girl in your car when you parked there yeah i did okay i mean that's understandable honestly let me tell you guys about my first date with my wife kelsey and maybe i've told this before but i'm not sure we went to the movies and i don't buy any snacks at the movies because they're too expensive so then we go in and uh midway through the movie i hear rustling in her purse she pulls out bags bagged popcorn you call the police and then she pulled out juice boxes and that's when you know she's the one that's when i knew she was the one although uh she did admit to me that you know her mom like gave her the stuff but uh she was raised that way so it's like you know yeah say we're the same person yeah juice boxes why aren't you like a capri sun or like one of these yeah like a caprice yeah like a crippy sun or something yeah she also had a water bottle yep yep yep yeah she also had candy yeah it was crazy mustard ketchup everything you need she made it full on subway sandwich that's what it felt like to me man yeah i used to do that um the movie theater where jack and i grew up used to have these two dollar tuesdays things and it was right by uh winco thank you um we used to go into winco before and i that was when like those green military kind of style jackets were popular with a lot of pockets so i'd go in there and get the bags of candy from there and i'd like put it all throughout the pockets and so i'd walk in and i'm sure it was obvious because my like jacket was stuffed but yeah that's the smart thing you do jack what do i do yeah ping pong oh so you're saying if i if i go on a date yeah well usually i'll do dinner usually they'll pay for me no i don't think i've ever been paid for on a first date really it's tough yeah i feel i feel like obligated to pay on a first date and i'm fine with it so i know a lot of people that i am dating at this time would either be like in college or something and i have like i work full time you're dating a lot of people at this time no i'm not but let's say i do go on a date with someone they're probably in college you know or just getting started with a career i've been working full-time for a couple of years so it's fine i'll treat them i'm cool with that and also there is a little bit of awkwardness it's like uh like the bill gets you know put down on the table and you're like okay who's gonna pay so i just reach for it and i usually just hand the server my card you know what it reminds me i actually got paid i not really got paid to go on a date this is i had just got my driver's license and uh i took this girl to a movie and her parents bought the tickets so the tickets were free we showed up at the movie and then she handed me like a 20 billion was like a 50 bill or something like this and said hey could you go and grab me some food at the concession stand and so i did i got it for i came back and i had the change and she says oh you know you could you could keep the change or like you could you could hold on to the change or something like that best day ever yeah and so i remember telling all my friends like i got like twenty dollars basically so that was my profit for going on the date really excited for yeah yeah she didn't care about the change no no you keep it yeah nowadays that change would just be like the guess that it took you to get to the movies yeah basically with inflation that thing would yeah and 50 bucks wouldn't have covered it that's crazy what a lovely story yeah so i was proud about that you know what jack maybe you shouldn't be looking for girls who are in college maybe find the girls who did something similar where they did college wasn't for them and they you know started their own business or something because i feel like you would have a lot more in common with somebody like that that's what i've said alex the thing is i'm a studious person like i i did well in school i i didn't mind college i liked high school i got good grades so it's not like i'm different from those people i just had opportunity presented to me and like any person a lot of people in my situation they would have taken it yeah but don't you think work changes you after a year like you're substantially different going to school for a year than working for you yeah especially if you're working for yourself yeah yeah it's just so then the person you're dating should also have a similar experience of working full-time and like experience in the real world because going from college to that is like dude that's a good point honestly i haven't really like gone on a date with a girl who's in that situation and i haven't been very satisfied with many of the dates i've been on so jack i've been telling you this scene that you need to know you haven't been telling me i swear have i not asked yeah i think i think graham brought up something very like probably almost the same thing you said that you set your tinder age between like two certain ages and i said that's probably too young unless you're dating one of those people who's worked full time and they work and they don't go to school it's too young because they probably lack life experience unless they've they've had work experience i think you could be you could be 18 or 19 with a solid year of work experience creating your own business or whatever and be completely different than the person who's 22 or even 23 who's partied through college and like hasn't had a single job in their life the two are different so that's what i said for you i think you just need some more work experience yeah so i'm looking now for girls with work experience and sent your resumes over here yeah so we'll see what happens yeah i don't know i do gotta say that like graham and i i feel like our relationship improved a lot once i started doing youtube but i started to understand it a little bit more when i had like a traditional job because i was i was like younger in the workforce right when we started dating i was almost 21 and i'd been working full time and yada yada yada yada but when i started working for myself it's like totally different than working a traditional job and neither of you have really worked traditional jobs and i've had both experiences you're probably going to need someone who works for themselves a little bit because somebody who works at a traditional job will just go well the workday's done why can't you leave it alone or like i have no problem separating work from life because they're not passionate about it like somebody who owns the business so i feel like you need somebody who owns their own business yeah conversely uh when i was with kelsey and we had a wedding business or i had a wedding business i would take her to work with me and she'd help me it was like she'd help me carry like all the heavy stuff she wouldn't complain i'd buy her a dinner you know not pay her oh i mean you know but so you know maybe somebody who's ambitious and willing to help yeah alex how did you have her carry the heavy stuff yeah she wanted to yeah she's tiny she has no weight to pick up but that's what i loved about her that the fact that she was like you know we would go to to do a wedding and she'd be like no i want to carry that and i'm just like i i'm like i don't want you to hurt yourself and she's like no i want to carry that you know she's trying to like show that she was involved in this and uh um yeah so a part of me i think that's uh so i didn't make her she wanted to but i feel like that's part of what made our relationship work even though she wasn't a you know an entrepreneur in that sense so let's talk about money and relationships yeah jack because like i said you guys are dating you have a wife alex uh let's talk about prenups and what's your guys opinion on that and how expensive can divorces be okay let me jump in here because i feel like i have to jump in first otherwise everyone's like oh she just agreed with graham i think for my situation with graham a prenup is totally there i think if somebody's coming into a marriage with assets they had before they probably are going to want them after and i can totally understand a prenup in that case if you're like both straight out of college and you have nothing to your name i feel like sometimes that can be a little insulting but like with grams in my situation was different i had had my roth that would you know at this point has grown i have a decent amount of stocks you have your real estate properties it's nice to feel like those things are kind of protected if that makes sense and just kind of to go into it with a plan but in other situations like you can definitely see where somebody's like that's insulting i have a friend who um both like right out of college gonna get married and then um they both had nothing to their name i mean like maybe ten thousand dollars between the two of them and he was like i want to prenup and i was like yeah that's insulting especially because all your money that you have at that point will coach you just getting it i don't think so i think it's good to have a plan regardless even if you're both starting out with zero because otherwise the default is you leave it up to the state and we all know how the state generally tends to allocate resource i mean it's just i don't trust it in the hands of a random courtroom and depending on the state's jurisdictions for whatever i think is better to have a plan ahead of time whatever that might even if you're both starting out with zero you could still because the whole aspect of a prenup is agreed upon between both parties so you could always ask for something and and it's up to the two to agree on that together yeah but when you when you have like especially in this friends case when you have almost nothing spending you know half of that money on getting a prenup just doesn't seem worth it to me when you already have the joint banking account when it's already going to be probably 50 50 when it's both of your money that's going in towards all these assets everything's gonna be joined but that's a lot cheaper to spend even let's just say ten thousand dollars now than potentially spending a hundred thousand dollars getting divorced and fighting over who gets what because that would be cheaper still than the alternative even if you leave it up to the state and you say all right everything's 50 50. i guarantee there's going to be something where one party feels entitled or wants another bit that maybe the other person doesn't agree to that's more expensive i can see that i mean i will be the first to admit like my parents aren't divorced i don't have very much experience with divorce so in my mind i just go okay the state would you know 50 58 but when all the assets are 50 50 and when you're earning about the same and you don't really have very many assets it should be 50 50. um because everything would be joint i mean then that's that 10 000 when you go to buy that first home that's also your money that's being put into that first home so maybe i just don't know too much with with divorces and whatever but i definitely like in cases like ours i don't get where people are like you know i feel like you don't trust me if you're asking for one it just makes it easier when there's stuff we're both bringing in yeah how did the girl in that relationship feel towards the prenup was she like discouraged by oh she said no i'm not doing that because everything at this point is 50 50. because um because he was wanting to have the first home just go to him that they were looking at purchasing and she's like well dude over i'm making more than you most of this down payment is my money why would you get the house well then that doesn't make sense yeah i well i think the house should be split in terms of who into the percentage of which person contributes so if one person is coming up with half the down payment then obviously that should be they should be equally untitled yeah agreed yeah i also think it's like completely up to the individual couple everybody's gonna have a completely different circumstance going into it and there's definitely like a scale of it but like our circumstance might be different than somebody who has a similar age gap to how we do it could be that the younger ones making more money so i just feel like it's something that each couple needs to come to on their own terms i don't think they're bad no i don't think they're bad i just see it as an insurance policy basically like if if you have a car and you're driving it around um and you have a choice just to leave it up to the state to decide if you're in an accident how that's allocated or you could come up with your own insurance policy and say at least i know that these are the terms if i were to get into an accident i think it's a good idea regardless what do you think jack for me personally i think it's up to each individual relationship if they want or if they don't want i know i would prefer prenup let's say i marry a higher earner that's like making way more than me i would still definitely 100 want to prenup and i just think because for me personally i'm able to detach like my emotions from certain things but i know some other people are different like they can see that as a personal attack if you request a prenup they could think oh my gosh they don't you know they don't trust me with their finances like i understand other people are different but for me i'm pretty good at being able to detach emotion from my decision making and i think that i would just that's why i want one with macy on our second date i brought it up there because i it was the third okay three yeah second maybe a little too soon it was our third date and i could tell i would i really like macy and i could like tell it was going somewhere and so i'm like i just want to let you know as soon as possible that this is on my mind and like this is something that's important to me that way you never think or have to wonder like oh wow like we're two years into this and now he's asking for it like what is it it's like it's early enough where like if if it's gonna be an issue it's better to probably flush it out early on um and if it's not an issue then great but at least it's it's early enough where it's like not a surprise if that makes sense i think if you approached a similar thing and just third third date that's your i mean i've been on third dates with girls and then not fourths and i feel like if i brought up like you know pre-nups that could mean a lot then yeah like that is such a unique thing to bring up on a third day honestly i would bring that up like a year into the relationship no no no no no so the thing with graham and i and why it was the third day is our first date it was supposed to be like an hour or two and it lasted seven hours and the only reason why it ended was because literally nothing was open oh yeah that's true everything was closing yeah everything was closing it was like midnight get to that creepy hour it's like you know the strange people start walking around the streets people you guys yeah we didn't want to be among our fellow strange people yeah i know but yeah our first one was seven hours it was meant to be an hour to our second one we were just gonna go grab lunch and i don't think it was just lunch i i think we'd planned lunch and i was just gonna show you like to the harbor and stuff well maybe you did didn't you cancel work i did that was it oh it was supposed to be lunch and then you had work at five and you called in sick or something like that i'd work from like one to five because i was working with that retail job on the weekends because i was like i have nothing better to do besides going and go make money um but yeah i cancelled on it and then our second date was 12 hours and again it stopped because we literally had nothing to do everything was closed again so by that point it was like we'd spent the time of like going on like what we waited we waited until 1201 so we could call it like a two-day date that's cute yeah yeah we were literally sitting here in the car like in the driveway yes be like all right 1201 yeah i was living with my parents at that point and they were like my mom was like looking out the window and she's like what the hell are they doing mom seven more minutes watching you guys because you could see us sitting in the front seats and she's like well i just i want to turn off the lights did you guys kiss when you left i don't know ew oh sorry sorry i didn't mean it tmi yeah yeah but that third date i was glad you brought it up then because i think at this point because i haven't had very much experience with divorce i mean as you're saying that it's expensive this i genuinely have no frame of reference i was glad that you brought it up early because i had time to like research it and really get you know my bearings on like what exactly it is what's the purpose of it and like at a point where i wasn't so emotionally involved like i am now that i could kind of detach a little bit and figure out what it was without feeling immediately insulted yeah yeah and it's thorough i mean a prenup you think of every situation possible from like you know if if the partner is at state are they moms uh the pets we didn't did we put ramsey we didn't we didn't we didn't but i think it's just you know if god forbid if anything were to happen i mean we kind of would like i couldn't i would get both no oh no for the record that is not the case i don't agree i don't agree i don't agree i would just be like you have to be pretty heartless to like take an animal from somebody i mean yeah i just can't yeah but that goes both ways like just saying like let's say she wants both i know she doesn't but or sorry yes she does my bed i love my babies then it's that goes the same way like you wanting to take one or two animals it's like wow then you're the heartless the thing is the thing is the animals decide i think it's pretty clear bailey is a is a mama's girl and ramsay's uh daddy's boy i don't know i don't know whatever right now he gives me a lot more love than he gives you wow gives me a lot of oh bailey spends a lot of mornings with me so let's talk this through guys let's let's talk is alex as a married man do you have a prenup with your wife uh i do not have a prenup with my wife i'll have you guys know we thought about it we talked about it um but we are considering doing a post nup so uh is everything okay what do you want to talk about alex what's wrong air it out no no no everything's okay tell us no no no we um it's just us here or yeah only us the prenup stuff i definitely think it's up to the to the individual um in terms of like separating assets and stuff kelsey and i got together with relatively um similar amounts of assets um and she helped me build the business and and she supports me in the business so um and because of that i i didn't really care about getting a prenup done before i got married um but um talking about like how what graham was saying i definitely don't want to leave something up to the state to decide so we want to do a post and up just to kind of put every situation out there and how we would want it to be split but we are a little bit different in terms of you guys because we kind of keep separate finances but we kind of look at stuff like for example if we buy a house if we're both making the decision to take our personal assets and put it into a joint asset we kind of think it's kind of split um a little bit more evenly even if i were to have more income or kelsey were to have more income at that time we're making the decision though when we do that but that's where we're at i think that's good yeah one condition i think for the prenup the whole time i've been doing because i remember i asked you i think it was on that third date i'm like are these done like after engagement are these typically done like before and gate or like how does that whole thing work and you're like typically it's after someone gets engaged my whole condition and somebody for whatever reason this is like this really fires people up was that i wanted it done before getting engaged because i just thought that was kind of a little morbid to be like so what are we gonna do if you die huh like where am i so whatever and like you know what's going to happen we divorce also like i feel like and not that i'm unstable about our relationship at all it's like an extra little thing that can be like okay we got through the prenup process together we're going to be fine you know it's also weird um to get engaged to someone and then have that as like a condition of the engagement it's like here's a promise but before we do that here's this first is like you get everything else done and then it's just i don't know i feel like it's probably better to get it out of the way it's untraditional to do that but i agree with that it is it's kind of weird but i'm like i would rather like at this point now it's just like okay then we get engaged then we planned a wedding and like you just get to play in the wedding you don't have to deal with the lawyers you don't have to deal with whatever you just are planning a wedding but then it's also the fear of like if you if that doesn't happen what's gonna happen to the wedding and like oh if i don't agree to this we have everyone's counting on us now and you know then you have the situations of like ah crap are you are you agreeing to this because you just want to get married and and and not cancel on everybody or is this like a real thing so i think it's probably better to get it done sooner what's the total cost of a prenup how much does it cost could be anywhere from like a grand to probably twenty thirty thousand dollars it depends on the situation so they could vary i bet you could get most for probably one to three grand what did your prenup cost 10 grand or no all in it was like it was under 15 thousand dollars you guys couldn't have just like pinky promised or something thank you promise i would just do like over text messages would have been cheaper well yeah see that's what was my thing earlier too with the with my friend that they only had about ten thousand dollars and like that's literally probably gonna be like i know ours is a little bit more complex because they obviously don't have anything you have a lot of things but uh it's like that's all your money and then you're starting doesn't have to be it could be they could probably find someone for fifteen hundred to two grand if if not cheaper probably i just don't think that a prenup is necessarily like something that shows that you can't trust the other person in the relationship it's not for me it's not an emotional thing it's just a smart logical thing to do and i just see it as just another step in the journey i think i think some people see it that way some people see it as a you don't trust me for me it's like a contract just like we would have a contract for what we do a marriage is very much a financial agreement as well and it makes sense you would have a contract but other people would see that as well because then you tie in emotions with with a contract it's not just like a business decision it's also an emotional connection that you have with somebody and throwing in a contract on an emotional connection is difficult it is yeah because the grandmother is the same thing as a marriage contract a gramps is a lot he's like yeah well yeah yeah he's like well marriage is a contract i'm like no it's not it's a commitment you make to each other so so it's interesting because people have definitely very different looks and i do know like the majority of females who look at marriages and like wedding and then you're making these commitments in front of everybody and and see a marriage more that way but then i know more of these finance guys like you or like a marriage is a contract and then when we explain to each other because we've had this conversation like okay what is a marriage to you and that's something you you know i guess if you i don't know someone like graham that's very analytical you gotta figure out before that you're definitely yeah mesa says it's commitment but to me it's like i'm not going to be any more committed i'm i'm just i'm committed it's it's your i'm a hundred percent drama zero and so it's like well you know for me marriage wouldn't be it's if anything it's not trusting like the marriage because like a mayor's license because if it's like oh you get these extra perks if we're married or because we're married like i just think it's just like you just do it because you do and that's what a relationship is and that's like i don't know that's why so that's where we kind of had a conversation similar to you and you see so kelsey and i uh for those that you of you that don't know we got married late last year before the end of the year um but we haven't had our like our like wedding and so people when i tell people i'm gonna have a wedding they're like wait aren't you married i'm like well well yeah technically and so what we kind of talked about or at least yeah i can't speak for my wife she's not here so let me speak for myself um the marriage part of it that we had uh [Music] late last year that's the contractual part that basically tells the government body that we're married and whoopty do now i get tax benefits and all this other cool stuff the part that means more to me is having a wedding and then we didn't do vows last uh when we i call it eloped i guess you could say um so when we get married this year when we have the wedding um that's when we'll do our vows and and i like macy said that's kind of where we're making a commitment in front of like family and friends and stuff um but i get it graham it's not that like i'm any more committed than i am now um but i'm just uh putting that commitment in words out loud in front of family and friends that's really all it is i think sometimes it's about also like vocalizing your feelings too that you're actually sitting down you're like i'm vocalizing my feelings i'm gonna make these va for people that do custom bounds i'm going to make these vowels and really really think about it in a way that you probably wouldn't on the day to day i think a wedding's about making those commitments and marriage is about keeping those commitments and growing with a person i get that there's a whole contractual side to it but uh the way i have always looked it is like a wedding is where you're together it doesn't matter if you're eloping doesn't matter if you're with family i mean ideally i'd love to be with family and friends but you come you sit down you figure out like what am i gonna promise this person for the rest of your life and yeah you're kind of already doing it on the day today but it's a different thing to actually vocalize and speak that to the other person it's like being in a relationship with somebody for example if they never said i live i love you i would be like do they love me you know and it's about like you're sitting down you're vocalizing it in a very very um i don't know intimate way with the other person so now after seeing anecdotal yeah love and money stuff we're gonna actually get someone who has evidence and statistics and she's a judge and she's talking about expensive divorces some crazy stories and all of the other nuts things about uh divorces let's bring her on welcome we're so excited to have you on we've been talking now for about two months i think going back and forth on instagram yes i think it deserves some clarification how we kind of met but i was looking for videos uh i've been watching the people's court a lot lately and reacting to those videos because i love the stories and when i was searching for new people chord videos your videos came up from support court and i was like what is this and so i started watching these videos they're amazing thank you i absolutely love them and so we reacted to a few of the videos and just i think it was you jack was like we should just dmr or maybe i dm do you i can't i think you mentioned it in a reaction video you're like oh yeah i should reach out to you vonda and you can come on the iced coffee hour or something like maybe that was it and then you reached out to me yeah and then sure enough you happen to be here in vegas so we have a lot to talk about both in terms of legal issues child support issues maybe we could talk about uh everything else that's involved in either marriage divorce we want to hear all the juicy stories that you have and how you got to have your judge vonda b show okay how did that come to be so i am a practicing family law attorney i've been doing that for the past eight years in dallas county well one day it was i believe it was on a saturday like new year's eve or something about three years ago i was watching tv and this show called the couple's court came on where it was a husband and wife acting as a judge and i was like what is this i've never heard of couples court then after couples court went off you had um paternity court that came on and i said wait a minute now we're talking couples court paternity court you have people's court nobody is talking about child support that is the most controversial area of law why isn't anybody talking about that so within my office a couple of guys they do all of my editing and marketing everything like that so i went to him and i said hey what do you think about filming a show where i act as the judge and i reenact cases that i've seen or handled personally yeah and they were like bunda that's an amazing night that is a good idea so we started filming and now what you see today three years later is support court with judge vonda b i never envision it to be that big because i literally started it to educate people about child support laws in texas so to see it grow from one follower to over a hundred and fifty three thousand now on youtube i think it's pretty cool that is now how much are you making from youtube now because i i have a feeling pretty soon if not already you're gonna make more money from youtube than you will practicing law and actually we have congratulations thank you gosh thank you i posted on facebook today on one of the lady lawyers channels they were asking hey when are you ladies going on vacation when is your staff going on vacation i said i actually closed down december 1st and i'm not going back until after spring break and they were like wow boss wow but yeah it it's good the ad revenue is amazing you should do a sponsor in the middle of one of the the how funny would that be i would love it i would just put it in thank you to gram relief for sponsoring this in the middle of the the support court yeah listen you should be you well we could talk a little later on the ways to monetize your channel but so how did you get into law to begin with and why child support i always wanted to be an attorney ever since i was i believe two years old i always wanted to be an attorney my dad retired from the sheriff's department in dallas county he worked there over 30 years my mom retired from dallas county as a supervisor in the felony courts so it was one of those things that i just kind of fell into and then i married the bailiff that's on the show well the newer episodes the older episodes that you see with the baylor that's my dad so the newer episodes that's my husband christopher shaw who is actually a police officer he is the police chief at unt dallas in um is located in dallas and also at the unt college of law in downtown dallas so yeah it's something i just always wanted to do and then child support in particular i had a personal experience with child support with my son's father and it was one of those situations my situation was not as bad as i've seen others yeah you know but i was like why not do this so it kind of found me you know i had the patience for it you definitely have to have patience the personality of course because you have to have a lot of compassion when people are coming and talking to you about child support issues and the mom is not paying child support or the dad is not paying child support there are a lot of hurt feelings that lie underneath that so once i can kind of counsel through that then we can move forward with the progression of the case what was your first case you ever took i'm sure everyone remembers the first oh what is that the first case i had it was dad trying to get custody of the child mom i believe was an exotic dancer and she was posting all over instagram you know about her clients she was posting her body and there was marijuana that were in the pictures so dad is like yeah i don't think this is safe for the child interesting enough i go to court and in this particular county in dallas is located in tarrant county so tarrant county is like the fort worth the arlington area they are zero tolerance on drug usage of any kind including marijuana the judge looked at me right in my face and said miss bailey it's only marijuana and i said uh judge is only still illegal he just blew it off and so my client is confused because normally people get their kids removed for drug usage in that particular county they will put you on supervised visits for marijuana using wow okay it never happened but and i i don't like to play that whole gender role thing but you do see some differences in court i think had the roles been reversed dad would have been on supervised visits but i think because it was mom and this is what she did for a living what was she enjoy if i remember correctly those were her words she actually enjoyed doing it you know the judge didn't take her kid away from her and put her with dad which i thought was pretty sad yeah do you ever have a client where you disagree with their with their request or you it how difficult is it to represent a client who you're just let's say you're against or you just how often does that come up or did it come up all the time i do not always agree with my clients about 80 to 90 of my clients are men so when they first come in you know they're like i don't want to deal with my child's mom you're tough you're female you know how you know you all know how to handle each other right so it's a matter of educating first right because remember i said a lot of them come from a hurt place whether it was infidelity um even if it wasn't infidelity just the mere fact of being placed on child support kind of rubs people the wrong way so once i kind of get through that i can work through their case a lot easier but i have had some very very difficult clients some that wanted me to help them commit fraud what what's fraud i mean how would you describe it and you know where you let's say hypothetically in a divorce case right in texas a um texas is a community property state so everything is 50 50 anything accumulated during the marriage well since the date of marriage is considered community property well anything before that is separate property right so trying to get me to actively pursue property that you know existed before the marriage wow like that is total fraud especially when it's documented right it's separate property and i just refuse to do that kind of stuff but you definitely get asked i'm pretty sure a lot of attorneys you know are placed in situations where your clients want you to do something that you're absolutely opposed to yeah do you ever just choose to not represent a client because you disagree with what they're asking for absolutely especially when it comes to things that are just morally that i don't necessarily agree with like anything dealing with discrimination i'm not going to represent that person any form of discrimination whether it's you know race gender sexual orientation religion because believe it or not you get a lot of those situations in that initial consultation you get a feel it's like an interview i'm interviewing my potential client they're interviewing me and i just know right off the bat if it's anything dealing with discrimination i'm nine times out of 10 not gonna touch it right how much do you get paid per case and do you get paid based on how much money you could get for your clients like if i came to you and say hey i want you know 20 grand a month would you get paid like a commission like a real estate agent would get paid like a commission on the deal i wish you worked like that like every month you get like a small sliver of imagination well we do in a sense you can get paid by the month right because you have an initial retainer that your clients have to pay you when they come in so for me the initial retainer if you want to retain me for a contested matter depending on the contested nature it starts at about 10 or 15 000 okay and that's just the initial wow and then you have to replenish that every time it gets to a certain amount so some people do pay on a monthly basis some pay bi-weekly it just depends on the contested nature of the case and a lot of times the contested nature comes from the client itself is really not the other person it's them wanting to contact you all throughout the day it's 3am you get this random thought and it's like hey i want to message my lawyer at 3am yeah you know i mean i may not respond until the next day but depending on what it is you want me to do the next day it would require time spent on the case yeah i have to say uh jack i don't know if i told you this but uh oh yeah i know you know about this about a year ago so i've never had a lawyer ever for anything and uh i was negotiating a contract and it was i did i didn't know how to navigate it because it had to do with with um uh it was for a startup investment and so i hired a lawyer to review it all and he was so helpful and he explained everything to me and then at that point i was like well you know what i and then he drafted up our uh our contract between jack and i and it was like wow that's really easy and then all of a sudden i've had him review every single thing and uh yeah that line kind of gets blurred between now it's like because we talk so often it's like no he's kind of like a buddy and i could send him texts and like what do you think of this and just all hours it's exactly like you said no he's getting billed for this but uh or i'm getting billed for it but uh yeah i could definitely see that especially with something as sensitive as uh like child support oh yeah definitely definitely and it's at our discretion what we choose to build for he your attorney may not bill you for everything i think it's basically turning into a monthly thing now because yeah you know and you do have that discretion so there are some things maybe you know you can cut the price in half where it would normally be this you charge this if it were a communication where it was five text messages you'll bill for it but maybe you'd bill for two or three sure something like that especially if it's a client where there's gonna be some longevity and they're gonna be a recurring client yeah you'll cut little breaks every now and then got it so what does your job entail like is it all child support cases or do you also take on other sorts of cases as well oh yeah i do custody cases divorce cases which child supportive children are involved that's already an element within that case and adoptions as well you can do name changes so i've had people get their name changed as an adult i've had children their parents have their name changed for a variety of reasons all those type of things and property related issues too which can get really really messy and they can get messier than child support cases what was the worst situation you've seen or the most difficult it was a situation where i was coming to court and husband i represent a wife husband brought new girlfriend to court which i never advise anybody to do if you're going through a divorce and infidelity is an element that they're trying to prove in a divorce it's never going to be a good idea to bring the person that you were cheating on then went to courtroom oh my god i was thinking new girlfriend like they separated your girlfriend so that was supporting him that was the person oh yikes okay it was the most embarrassing thing ever because when that person comes into court you can call them as a witness even if they're not on your witness list so it's like hey i want to call her as a witness well she's not on your witness list she doesn't have to be she showed up to court today i have questions for her right is she obligated to do that let's just say she just showed up in the courtroom and she's like no i gotta leave right now well i can still call her as a witness and ask the judge to make sure that she sticks around because she came to court and i actually saw that happen i was on the other end of that where that happened to me one people when they come to court they like to have significant others and friends just to be there for moral support however the problem with that is you can get them called as a witness so that happened to me and i said to the attorney they're not related to this case at all well they may be i want to call them as a witness i was like that is so messed up so ever since then when i saw that i was like well if it's a witness that could be you know a character witness have a lot of information that i may or may not need i want to call them in and that's what happened on the case it was bad wow yeah so what was the outcome of that case they ended up fighting after like physically fighting oh my gosh they ended up physically fighting and just so you know family courts fight more than in criminal courts are you serious yes so the two ladies were fighting yeah they were fighting and and the husband had to intervene no and break it up right yeah and they went to jail because you have bailey's name no yeah they went to jail it was bad they waited out until they got outside of the courtroom but yeah it was right there in the hallway it was like the wildest thing i'd ever experienced now i've seen fights in the courthouse that literally did not involve me i was at one end of the child support courts and i'm looking to the other end of the hallway and you just see people fighting right and that's normally what it is oh my gosh it's hurt feeling someone is bringing someone new to court right and when i saw that i was like yeah i can't i can't do this that was just too much for me and i said to the attorney i was like you know you need to have a conversation with your client yeah not only was it rude it was extremely hurtful they're going through a divorce and i think they had been married almost 20 years that's a long marriage we're not talking about people that you know just eloped and been married a year or two we're talking about a 20-year marriage there are a lot of hurt feelings there gosh oh i can't imagine that oh well i experienced it and i never have to see that again wow so on like these these tv shows how real is something like the people's court i've always been curious like if some things cause some of these characters and their characters how do they find this guy how do they screen for these people because we've done our own like we did the the graham stefan show right people call in and screening for interesting calls was so difficult and we just didn't get enough and so i would imagine like the people's court they get these insane scenarios like how much of that is scripted or played up i mean a lot of it is scripted but with certain shows they have where the judge is an arbitrator so in in which i'm probably sure is in your you all's contracts there's an arbitration clause so arbitration means that you all will go to an independent person whatever that outcome is i don't want to say ruling because they're not a judge but whatever the outcome is that's final it's binding kind of like a mediation type situation yeah so that's what they're doing a lot of times on these courtroom shows so some of those rulings and outcomes they're actually legit but you really can't tell which part is scripted versus which part is unscripted because i've had friends that have appeared on courtroom shows and they're like uh yeah vanda that was scripted but it was portions of it that were real like they had a real life issue the reason they were going to court yeah you know and it's small claims so we're talking about nothingness over like five and twenty five thousand dollars yeah you know if you broke my vacuum cleaner or you didn't pay the other half of your rent yeah it's about 2500 right something like that yeah i like this so but so the downside is you can't do that for child support unfortunately right so you couldn't get a real case and just showcase it and or can you well and that's the thing i don't know if you can actually do that per se but i think if at any point i were to become an arbitrator yeah and i were not running for judge which we'll talk about that here in a second because i am currently running for judge um when i if i were to become an arbitrator or something like that and have a show that is something that i would be able to do i just don't know necessarily the logistics of it because there is an actual child support court but that's not necessarily arbitration so when you go to child support court they have the attorney general there that um helps mediate the case between the two people so they don't have to go to court but if they don't agree then they'll have to go to court but arbitration is something totally different so i mean it's something i'm looking into long term do these people get paid to be on the show i'd imagine if if one person wins it's like well we're just gonna pay it well no so a lot of them are just volunteers really right some of them were my family members no they were just excited like when the show first started we needed talent so they were like yeah i'll do it i'll do it and the more popular the show has become people like hey i want to come on yeah support court and i'm like okay so yeah it's yeah we haven't we haven't gotten to that point yet we're still kind of in even though it's 153 000 subscribers that's still in the growing phase yeah so once we get it to where we want where we have a legit company that we're going through for our talent and everything like that it'll be a little different yeah yeah i feel like logistically that would have been extremely challenging to start up because you needed an entire i mean you have to have an audience you have to have so many people there and you also have to have a courtroom do you have to like rent out the courtroom i do and then what about like the cameras and everything is it already a pre-prepared courtroom for shoot filming stuff in there or is that just like an actual courtroom where you bring your cameras in great question so a friend of mine he is a personal injury attorney so he does the trucking accidents and car wrecks and stuff like that so they do a lot of jury trials they'll bring in people to do a mock trial so they'll present their case to these 12 people to see what the potential outcome would be so he built out part of he has a law office in that building so they built out that courtroom specifically to bring in the mock trial jurors and such so the courtroom is already built out that's the courtroom that you all see the um filming crew that's my crew who that's it's their own media group they actually come in set up all the cameras and everything like that and the talent are the people that the audience members they're actually the talent i wanted to make it be be as realistic as possible to a child support court in texas all the litigants when you have court on that day everyone sits in the gallery together until their case is called so you literally hear all the cases before yours seems intimidating yeah i mean it could be because you're sitting there you're listening to the judge give rulings your situation may be similar to the one that's before you so it's like man oh man i'm doing that the judge did this to that person right so everyone sits in the gallery because i know i was getting feedback they're like everyone is sitting in the courtroom together i'm like that's how it is in a texas child support court room yeah my one i've been to court once and it was for a tenant who was growing weed in the garage and then stopped paying his rent oh and it was so scary because i remember and uh yeah no i had someone um helping me so i was representing myself well no no i did this guy was helping me out but i had to go like up on the stage by myself i was so scared and you hear i remember hearing all the cases he's like graham stefan versus and then the name of the other person i was terrified oh yeah and you walk up there and i'm like everyone else looking at me yeah uh but thankfully i didn't do almost any of the talking the tenant did all the talking pretty much and uh just dug himself in a hole because he didn't come with any information at all that happens all the time yeah very common so i've been to court once as well i uh i like jay threw a stop sign according to the cops so like i went up to the stops yeah okay it was like 11 p.m at night and it was a four-way stop in a residential area and you know i think i did a california stop so yeah i kind of rolled through it a little bit got pulled over and decided to take it to court you know so i could oh gosh no no no no i would plea guilty i'll get the traffic and then you can yeah you can get traffic schools so you don't get the points on your record also can like lower the price of your thing so like i went with like a 250 ticket and it went down like so i saved like 30 dollars and i also didn't get the points on my record but i remember i filmed this because i was so frustrated for like going through the stop sign because let's be honest not a lot of people come to a complete stop at stop signs where you feel the car like you know stop yeah drake calls it a rolly exactly really not a stop exactly oh yeah exactly so i figured no one does that and there was a stop sign leaving the courthouse and i looked for the cop that came and pulled me over and i found him in the parking lot and i watched him drive out of the courthouse and he did not stop yeah i filmed it and i went back to that courtroom and i went up to the person standing at the door i'm like i just caught the cop committing the exact same crime that i committed and why i'm here today what can we do how can we make this right and he's all yeah you're gonna have to go to like the police department and then like file all these reports and everything it's like and what do i get out of that like what do i get out of that no but i filmed it it's like it's posted some random youtube channel i have someone has to find it yes they have to we have to make it go what would they what would the title be of that it's like cop pulls me over for running a stop sign then runs a stop sign something like that yeah it's like it's like a 20-second clip yeah we need to change that title make it something short something yeah because he's breaking the law something like that yeah oh my god stop making a rollie it was frustrating yeah let's talk about different case scenarios okay okay so let's say if someone were to be making as much money as let's say graham over here what would that support court like verdict be like if you were to marry someone and then split yeah i was curious about this because let's say in a scenario where like someone makes let's just say you know 20 million dollars a year okay okay the other person makes 200 000 a year okay you're living as though you make 200 000 a year even though the one person's making 10 how is child support dictated in a scenario like that it depends on the needs and the lifestyle of those particular children because child support in texas it is very simple it's a calculation talks about your gross your net you know you get the net from taking out the taxes and everything like that after you get the net how many children do you have and of course giving you credit for any health insurance that you provide right sure that's straight like that well you have nuances where in the texas family code there are certain factors that you can ask for to get what's called above the guidelines child support so let's say hypothetically the children have a special diet they can't eat anything gluten right so there's a chef sure that comes in cooks these children's meals three to four times a day they go to daycare at an exclu in an exclusive neighborhood an exclusive area um they have tutors that are world renowned they're in golf programs with private sessions all those type of things those are some of the things that you can then go into the court and say hey i need child support a little bit more than what the guideline would be but you have to meet that requirement before you go to court what happens is in that same scenario people feel like oh they make this amount of money so i'm entitled to this amount of child support it doesn't happen like that i don't know if you all are familiar with um chris brown has a child support case out of houston texas i didn't know that chris brown the rapper i didn't know that either he has two kids now but i had no clue yeah yeah well he has a child his case is out of houston texas and the mother of their child receives child support based on the cap so in texas there is a cap it's up to well at that time it was a lot lower but now it's 9 200 of your net resources that's the amount of money that you can get no matter how much money chris brown is worth she's only entitled to that ninety two hundred dollar cap well like i said back then it was like i think it was eight thousand five hundred and fifty at the time that that case took place so child support she received like 2020 2300 something like that it's not a lot of money well people online were having reactions to it right they were like chris brown is worth all of his money right why isn't she entitled to more oh my god i'm a movie to texas because it's so cheap and it's like no that's not how texas law works she didn't have any facts according to the court documents right she didn't have any facts that described a lifestyle of the child that required anything extra so she should get the bare minimum the baseline well when i say bare minimum 2 300 is not bare minimum for the average person but considering his income it was the bare minimum so absent anything showing that this child is let's say special needs or has anything going on that will require that extra care in terms of funding you're going to get what they got i thought it was to create a stable environment for the child so that when they go from one house to another there's not a big discrepancy wouldn't in that case there be a huge discrepancy between chris brown's lifestyle and you know getting paid 2 300 a month and that is a great question you said chris brown's lifestyle his lifestyle is not the determining factor it's the lifestyle of the child so in texas it's the the hallmark is what's in the best interest of the child right it never has anything or shouldn't have anything to do with the parents individually because then we would step in muddy waters right then you'll be talking about oh well you're worth this that mean your child is entitled to this and that's a scary way to look at things because even if you're not someone who's chris brown let's say you're a ceo who lives in texas you make 500 000 then if you base that off of you know lifestyle of that person that makes 500 000 they would exceed what necessarily the child should receive based on what the law says so it's on the needs of the child it always starts there now is that every state or is that just texas every state have a maximum every state has their own i wouldn't i don't necessarily know if every state has their own maximum but every state does have a certain um cap in guideline that they use in order to determine what someone is going to pay for child support child support in texas closely resembles that of california california is also a community property state like texas now the amounts are different so for one child in texas is 20 of your net resources in california i believe is 40. 40 40 percent that's a lot it is a lot which is why people come to texas but 40 up to a cap or is it just 40 of that resource now 40 up to a cap 40 up to that cap got it okay yeah i have a question so what if they're making millions and millions of dollars but it just so happens that they set like a 15-year plan to grow their business and they spend everything on business growth and then they're only making like a hundred grand a year like do can they go after those funds and say no you're using them to grow your business or how does that work that is a great question so in a situation like that you'll need a little bit more of research right so i've seen cases where attorneys have hired what's called a forensic accountant someone to actually come in and do the tracing and come and testify to where the money is actually going and what someone is actually making because you can separate the business from your personal so even though your business may be making millions you may truly only be making a hundred thousand dollars which is typically what people want to be placed on child support for right so it requires a little bit in a situation like that it requires a little bit more research to actually find that what i found people that have situations like that where their business is making a lot of money and they're trying to say they only make a hundred thousand they never separate the business from the personal what do i mean by that they don't have a what do you call it like a checking system that's writing them a check every two weeks or every so often they're literally transferring money from their business account yeah to their personal account and when you do that me as an attorney i can look at that and do an average on a monthly basis like how much you're transferring to yourself and say hey you're saying a hundred thousand but according to these transfers and it links back to your personal account it's coming up to 300 000 so in a situation like that well you you don't ever want to do that because that's just not good for business right right but then on top of that you want to make sure that you're separating the two so you don't muddy the waters got it yeah they call that co-mingling so so basically you're saying that that in order to prove a hundred thousand they need to actually pull a hundred thousand from the business to the personal everything else stays in the business correct and the best way to do that is to not pay yourself personally like that get a checking system to where you're getting um a what do you call it a w-2 in a w-2 making sure it's on your tax return all your documents look good and the forensic accountant that's the best person to do that tracing for you if you have a regular cpa or someone like that who can do it that would be great too but it's going to require someone else independent of yourself to come in and say that yeah there was a very wealthy real estate developer in uh in los angeles he was married i think for only like two years and his ex uh wanted i think it was 75 000 a month from him to maintain her lifestyle and i was like what that made that made no sense to me but she was fighting it and and the poi and this guy uh uh was basically he was a very prominent figure and he was trying to suppress all the news about this because she the the the more he said no the more she's like well i'm gonna i'm gonna blow this up in this thing and now you're gonna see it on this publication it's gonna be everywhere right right and i don't know the outcome of that but uh yeah i have to look that one up the one i looked at recently i cannot think his name um it just went viral on social media people were upset about him paying so much money i can't remember how much he has to give her for life and everybody was upset about and i said well did any of you bother to read the article he agreed to it and we were on facebook and they were like wow in the world with would he agree to that and i said you have to think the media is only giving you so much right of what actually happens in these people's lives right so if he knows he's worth this amount because i looked it up i think he was worth like 4.3 million billion it must have been billion it was 4.3 billion i cannot remember his name right now but he agreed to pay so much money i said think about it he's worth all of this there are probably assets that he was able to maintain in order to give her that money right so whatever it is that he has probably working behind the scenes or on the side it's the drop in the bucket to just give her what she's asking for so it just really depends on the circle wait so in that case he was paying her a lot of money yeah it was a lot and it was for the rest of her life if i believe i read that correctly the media is only giving you a very small glimpse of a 20-year marriage or a 30-year marriage so it just really depends and a lot of these situations that you see with spousal maintenance they've already been kind of groomed to be set up to have that lifestyle so at a certain point if you i guess if you think about it from a legal standpoint and not necessarily a moral standpoint sure because we typically like to look at everything from a moral standpoint right but if you look at it from a legal standpoint if this person has been in this relationship with you 20 years they've raised the children you have been able to grow your business focus on your business do all of those things is it legally right for them to just walk away i agree nothing right you know what i mean so from a legal standpoint i can see it a little better if it were a moral standpoint i probably would have a little bit of a difference like i do like i do see a difference if if one person is staying home they're taking they've taken time off from their work they're out of the workforce they're taking care of the children they're supporting the family i i think that i mean obviously deserves to be compensated uh but in like this this other real estate guy's case like she was i think in her late 20s she was like uh she's from europe uh perfectly capable no kids and 75 000 a month just seems to me you know well how did she get to the united states from europe was it one of those things that was like a mail-order thing and see and that's another thing you know when i like to watch the id channel a lot yeah so you see things come up like that a lot you know where people get online they do like the mail order bribe thing and it's like hey i give you this amount of money if you come over here and marry me so you never necessarily know that who does that story oh it happens who pays what's the website the person the person that's offering you know they have all so if the person lives in the united states it's that person that's paying or is it the person that lives elsewhere is paying the person that lives in the united states is paying to have someone fly out to them and then marry them yes and it happens in a lot of european countries i mean i've seen it happen a lot right got it if you watch the investigation discovery i love you by the way id it happens quite frequently i mean at the end of it somebody ends up dead i mean that's the whole purpose behind the the um channel investigation investigation discovery either the person that came over ends up dead or the person that brought them over ends up being i don't want anyone but yeah it happens a lot more than what people know and they are literally paying you know for them to come over here because a lot of the time they want the citizenship right yes so it's an even exchange i want the citizenship the only way i can get it is if i marry someone who's in the states and you have to think the uh the living conditions in a lot of places outside the united anything to come to the united states and have the opportunities here so a lot of people and a lot of a lot of well i don't want to say it's most probably mostly men but uh you know they're just you know they want to bring someone over and they want the affection and the the love and well hopefully love but maybe not uh but it's very i mean it's transactional yeah sure yeah yeah so i'm newlywed and i'm congratulations thank you and i'm listening to these giant words like spousal support and i'm over here like my heart's like what um so i'm trying to figure this out what advice you know i i understand if somebody deserves um spousal support after you know like graham said taking time off of their work to support their children you know be a homemaker but what you know they're like prenups in place to protect certain assets but what can somebody like me do who is trying to set up for a successful successful future um what can i do to protect myself from um over stated claims maybe of something like this and i don't make a bunch of money but let's just say i do how can i protect myself and uh find something that's fair or just from a system being abused that is a great question um the first thing i would encourage people to do is to not start something you can't necessarily finish the lavish gifts and the big allowances and not necessarily saying that everybody does that right but you can't really start off like that because if you start off like that and that's the expectation and you keep doing it you've now set a trend and when you go to court hopefully you never go to court right but if you were to go to court that's going to be the testimony he or she started doing this six years ago and they never stopped doing it right so you've kind of told the judge like this is a status quo so it needs to be maintained so don't put yourself in a position where you're starting something that you may not necessarily want to finish at a later time that's the biggest thing that i see happening in these types of cases involving spousal maintenance so we talked about child support child support is within the name of itself support of the child financial support of the child spousal maintenance is essentially the same thing it's financial support for the spouse for a certain amount of time it can be something as temporary as six months it can be something as long as a lifetime just depends on the circumstances um a lot of spousal maintenance cases too just like child support cases that involve where a person may have to pay child support indefinitely for the child's life like if it's a child that requires a lot of medical assistance as an adult you know um something like that so it's the same thing with the spouse if a spouse is terminal and they require a 24-hour nursing staff or something like that and or they're in hospice and the spouse has always taken care of those bills and no met those medical needs then in situations like that the court can order that spouse to continue making those payments so essentially spousal maintenance is similar to child support the main difference is that you're paying it to your spouse or soon to be expels giving it to the other parent for the support of the child something that i would recommend people doing you mentioned prenup a prenup protects assets that existed before the marriage so you do a prenup before the marriage actually takes takes place you can also do a post-numb and prenups is short for prenuptial agreement post-numb short agreement means after the divorce so anything that has been accumulated or may be accumulated during the marriage you can write it out in your post-numbul agreement that it maintains a characteristic of separate property i've seen that happen too like people got married they had a house wife wanted to keep it they did a post-numb and it was clear that the house was going to go to wife at the time that a divorce would occur yeah my understanding though prenup also dictates the terms of the marriage itself so you could you could dictate in a prenup this is to you know this income is supposed to be separate property this is going to be divided like this alimony could be this it does um as long as a prenup does not violate public policy or is illegal or anything like that it's going to be upheld in court a prenuptial agreement cannot address the issue of child support right at all um it can't address you know what will happen with custody or anything with children but um anything absent a violation of public policy or like i said illegal then it's going to be uphill because it's essentially an a mutual agreement between both parties yeah so what if there's like a relationship between two people and one person makes a lot of money let's just say like 500 grand a year the other person makes you know like 60 70 80 000 a year and then the person that's making 60 70 80 000 isn't aware that the other person is making 500 000 and they live at a low standard of like they're not a low standard but like an average income and then they get married and then they get divorced but the person making all this money never discloses to the other person that he's making this amount of money and continues to live at that level jack come on obvious question ever what it is a great question though because why is it an obvious question how does the other person that you're marrying not know how much money you make oh you would be surprised that's why oh you would be surprised graham it would be fun he actually asked a very [Laughter] how do they not know really how do you know oh you will be surprised you'd be surprised graham but they get married and they have no idea how much the other person makes it that happens a lot what yep you end up not i mean it's the same thing like when people are divorcing it's like all the skeletons come out during a divorce you find out about children that you didn't know existed that were either created before your relationship started or created during your relationship i mean i've seen that happen same thing with assets you know hiding assets putting things in other people's name although you are the one who is the consto custodian of it it's in someone else's name it's offshore that kind of stuff happens so it is very very possible that a spouse could be marrying someone and not necessarily know all of the money that is attached to them or the debt because a lot of people you know they live off charge cards i've seen that happen too in divorces living off charged cars living this very lavish lifestyle and then next thing you know you get these notices in the mail that are like three and four months like hey the bank is getting ready to seize your house wow you're like wait a minute i thought that my spouse was taking care of all of that and turns out they have a mountain of debt there is no income so it can happen both ways oh i kept telling jack like there's no way you're getting married without the other person knowing how much you make but uh that's assuming everybody is honest i mean because everybody's not all right i guess so what so what happens in jacksonville right in this case in terms of a divorce like with spousal maintenance yeah like you live at some lower standard of living that when you could you know achieve with the joint income uh and you just never disclose how much money you're making well it really depends so in a lot of divorce cases especially ones that don't involve children um it is encouraged that you go to mediation well in order to settle in mediation you have to disclose everything and in a lot of divorce cases everything that's not disclosed ends up getting revealed some type of way especially if the attorneys do what's called discovery discovery is just a fancy word to say hey give me all this information so you well texas law has changed so you have to give this information up front now it used to be where you sent it to the other person they had 30 days to give it to you now from the time that a case is filed and the other person responds or files an answer to the case they have to produce all of these documents up front to now kind of circumvent the scenario that you're talking about because then you would have that lower income spouse pretty much walking away with nothing and the spouse that has more money walking away with everything so in my opinion the way that texas law kind of does it now they're called the initial disclosures where you have to give this stuff up front i think it kind of helps with making sure that doesn't happen as often i don't want to say it doesn't happen anymore but it doesn't happen as often as it used to got it the best solution to that jack i just came up with this i could just pay you less why are you saying this is directed towards me i'm just saying so my question was purely hypothetical that way it wasn't it didn't have to do with anything but just in case i think we should probably you know take it down a little bit you don't give me anything i don't pay you anything no you don't well well maybe okay we could we could we could keep it that way sure graham can i get a pay cut too while we're at yeah that is hilarious communication is key in any relationship and i see that falling by the wayside in a lot of cases they end up in divorce they just don't communicate with each other you have to communicate you have to be open and honest about finances i cannot stress that enough being open and honest about finances good bad and ugly you have to disclose all of it whether you want to or not yeah so something that we've talked about is we potentially want to adopt um or have a child and the one thing that kelsey and i as of now and obviously it might change is we want it to be 50 50 in regards to parenting right okay and it may not go that way depending on our schedule or you know whatever life may bring our way and we'll discuss it at the time but i mean assuming that we go 50 50 on on taking care of the child here is there anything that like we can do because you said you can't include children on a prenup you ca so i that doesn't mean that we can sign some sort of document that says if we split you know we're just going even like like there's no money exchange like i can't do that is that that's illegal or well i wouldn't necessarily say it's illegal it just violates public policy in terms of putting it into an actual agreement if you all are going to adopt though you can do um what is that called um i saw it happen in another state it didn't necessarily happen in texas they had an actual agreement between the two of them that outlined what the parenting roles were going to be not upon the time of a divorce at the time that they were married guys people should do that when they have a kid to begin with well i mean i don't understand a parenting agreement so it's kind of like but in texas you usually see a parenting agreement after someone is placed on child support this situation was different they adopted a child and outlined before any divorce or child support or anything like that what the parental roles were going to be for each parent and i believe this case i want to say arkansas but i could be wrong but it was a same-sex couple it was two females and they outlined what each person's roles would be when it comes to parenting with the child eventually they did go through a divorce and it got really messy because then it ended up not having anything to do with the parenting roles it was the parent that carried the child trying to say that the other parent was not the parent oh so they were able to the courts were able to use that parenting agreement between them to show that okay this is the parent because if you didn't think it was the parent you wouldn't have agreed to that right right but yeah putting something you know it doesn't necessarily have to be in writing right if you're talking about adopting a child with your spouse but i think it is important for parents to outline what the parental roles are you should not just let one parent take 100 role on everything that's you know feeding the child clothing the child taking the child to school picking them up from school um scheduling their doctor's appointments dental appointments one parent shouldn't do that solely because that's when you start getting into trouble and you mentioned you want to co-parent or do a 50 50 split everything you do during your marriage has to be 50 50. and that number i really don't like the term 50 50 because nothing really is 50 50 in general right someone at some point is always going to do more than the other one but as long as in terms of parenting you guys are sharing responsibilities as long as you do that you should be fine but you're not getting a divorce we're you're not getting a divorce so you don't have to worry about that well thanks and so though the other thing that you were mentioning too about not establishing uh a trend right when it comes to to certain gifts and stuff um to avoid maybe abuse of the was it spousal maintenance yeah uh so you're saying this year what i could do to avoid that is maybe not give any christmas gifts no that's not what i'm saying you can give christmas gifts just keep it under ten dollars you know you you just have to there's a difference between you know showering your spouse with gifts every now and then anniversary birthdays versus you know some of the things i've seen where they have an allowance of ten thousand dollars a month oh geez right that's their allowance and that doesn't include the cost of health insurance car note car insurance it doesn't include any of these things because i've seen that happen and when you maintain that lifestyle like that for some of these 10 15 year marriages how can you then get to court and say judge i can't afford to keep maintaining this well what have you been doing for the past 10 or 15 years so that's where you kind of get into trouble with that interesting so what you're saying is just you know as long as you're being fair as long as you know you're not trying to max out credit cards live above your beans uh it should hopefully the court should find a good solution for you guys to have a fair split should that happen oh yeah and ultimately you won't when it doesn't involve kids you want it to be equitable you use their word earlier you definitely want it to be equitable you want the other person to be able to live you want the other person to be able to um provide for their children if children are involved if no children are involved you want them to be able to maintain some of the same things that they were doing so it wouldn't necessarily be equitable um if they're they aren't able to do that anymore or for the flip side that other person it wouldn't necessarily be equitable to them if you've maintained doing something for so long that they've become accustomed to that's a part of their lifestyle to then sweep you know snatch the rug from under their feet i don't think that's equitable either so yeah just be fair what about this what are some red flags that you've seen in relationships to watch out for a lot first off um if the person has another child jack if the person has another child if they are talking bad about their child's parent that's always going to be a red flag always and it never fails i have cases where you know they were dating they thought they liked each other and that stuff was going on and then next thing you know they're in child support court because they have a kid and it's like okay history told you right that you were going to be in this position because they used to say these type of things about the other parent to you so that's a huge red flag to pay attention to another red flag to pay attention to is a parent that does not take care of their kids at all you definitely have to pay attention to that don't take care of their kids at all or do it when it's convenient for them or they're not providing any financial support whatsoever or not really in the child's life those are some things you know that will definitely if you're not careful will end you up in child support court i mean there are plenty others but those are the ones that pop immediately into my mind when you're thinking about child support wow i agree i think the ability to split amicably with someone is uh it tells you a lot about their character for example let's say i'm on a date with this girl and she starts negative talking your ex immediate red flag for many reasons for many reasons yeah yeah it is a red flag because just think about it there is something good you can find in everybody right at some point right and to just speak negatively about them now the relationship may have ended bad but you dated them so at some point there was something to say about them so you either just talk about you know the situation and how it ended maybe what you could have done differently because it's two people right you play a role in it but to just bash and trash talk the other person yeah you know what always reminds me of of one date i went on this this must have been like eight years ago a while ago but i went on this date and i forget how we even met but uh went on the date the entire date was her talking about her ex yeah the entire date and then it was revealed towards the end of the day and i've never in my life walked out and just like wait this is the one you walked out on yeah told me about this yeah did i tell you that yeah but you said on the podcast did i maybe maybe did you go did you say you were going to the bathroom yes yeah okay but she had also revealed something about like she was also dating someone else but it wasn't official and she didn't know if he liked her or not and i'm like why am i here oh so that's another myself to the bathroom because here's the thing it's like i and and here's and she ordered something expensive too yeah yeah yeah yeah so i always if if i'm going out to eat i i like it where they're not ordering like the most expensive thing on the eye because i'll order kind of cheap and you know i'm not like looking at what you put but you know if she's getting something that's like 50 and mine's 15 you know maybe there's something something there but uh yeah i got something cheap and she's like orders like all the expensive stuff and so i'm like i'm gonna pay for that and i'm gonna ask to split it because i got my thing she got hers i left right i left and that's another one never done that but yeah and didn't she text you after yeah she had she texted me afterwards at first uh yeah she kept texting me i i didn't respond and then i think she texted again like it was like a week later asking like another question about meeting up right i don't know it was some weird stuff i wanted to meet up with you it was such a long it was such a long time i don't remember exactly the text but it was along those lines oh yeah you definitely dodged a bully yeah she's crazy she was crazy oh yeah i remember her first text afterwards like she was like what happened what happened and then like five days later something she was like would you be pissed if your best friend pretended that their grandma was dying but it turned out they didn't i was like what she texted you that's something it was nice oh get out of there man get away nowhere lying dead grandma's not dealing with that what questions do you have for us we always like to flip it on the guest whatever you want to ask us you could ask us okay what made you all get into this podcast i think it's so awesome i'll follow you on instagram oh cool thank you yeah you're welcome yeah so what started the iced coffee hour what started the iced coffee it was jack's idea and jack wanted to start a podcast and and i figured well you know if if it's just an hour a week and we could just you know goof off and and film a video and monetize the conversation we may as well do it and uh i really enjoyed it and there was a period you know a few months in where it just it was so slow and jack was like now gotta keep it going and we posted every week and we did not want to miss an episode so we just kept it every single week we have not missed an episode have we missed idiot no no we've never not posted no and we've posted late maybe twice yeah and i figured a long form content type of more like candid uh video would be a better way for graham to connect with his audience and really like appeal to his base and the iced coffee hour i've noticed for those that do like watch all like every single piece of content whether it be like graham steffen show iced coffee hourgram stefan even this to family the iced coffee is a lot of people's favorites because we really like we get in to like the nitty-gritty here yeah and i feel like a lot more personality comes out on the iced coffee hour because it's more candid yeah and every episode is different which is what i like we we we rarely have the same person on twice when we do it's always about a different topic right but uh i just keep the engagement yeah yeah but i remember telling jack in the very beginning one of the biggest benefits of the podcast for me is getting to meet new people and it's strange by the way if you meet someone it's hard just to say hey uh do you wanna grab dinner yeah do you wanna like uh get grab lunch get a coffee because it's boring but anytime you say hey i wanna come on the podcast everyone says yes oh yeah no one would say yeah let's do a dinner no no one does that the podcast everyone said yes yeah so i mean it's great happy that you reached out to me and i was like wait a minute he has a blue check next to his name yeah who is this yeah and so i had to look it up and i was like okay this is pretty cool because a lot of people since the show have reached out to me on youtube and i love meeting new people it is like my thing i love meeting new people because i don't really think you necessarily meet a stranger per se you just haven't crossed paths yet yeah right so um yeah i i'm excited yeah i was definitely gonna say yeah when you said podcasting yeah when i say you're in vegas i was like we're going to vegas for our anniversary yeah that's perfect but see had i said let's grab dinner or something or let's grab a i wouldn't i you know let's grab it harder for you to even ask that in the first year yeah then there's always like what's what's the motive behind you like why dinner at least with the podcast like come on the podcast we could talk right but uh yeah so it definitely helps but you'll find that youtube is probably some of the best networking ever because everyone is on youtube and everyone now in my life has come from youtube pretty much everybody that i could think besides family it's like everyone i talk to now is uh youtube yeah everybody that has reached out to me have come through the youtube channel through instagram some some sort of social media medium yeah now i'm gonna tell you what you need you should absolutely start posting these videos on facebook if you're not doing that already oh yeah i don't do it as often you gotta get consistent with it you gotta post every episode that you're doing uh edit it down post it on facebook okay uh then do instagram reels same thing just post that to reels and then tick-tock okay that one video that i watched with the with the lady what was it she didn't want to work and her husband was making more money and she was like oh that was the guy who's a mechanic yeah yeah oh yeah and you said well you could go work and she's like i don't want to work yeah that would go for that video if you took that down the best 60 seconds of that video and you post it on tick tock that's a million views i sure will i sure will like i said i'm running for judge so that was so what does that mean exactly we haven't heard this so i'm i've been practicing law for the past eight years now i'm running for family court judge um it's the 255th family district court that's in dallas county so pretty much this court needs restoration like literally um from you name it from a judge banning people like attorneys out of the courtroom which is a big no-no because the courtroom belongs to the people right doing things like that showing bias on the bench clear bias you know different things like that i just was tired of seeing it and in my community i'm born and raised in dallas there's a specific area in dallas called oak cliff i don't know if you all are familiar with football or anything but the south oak cliff high school is a high school located in oak cliff they just won the state championship and it's been what 60 61 years or something like that so it was a big deal right so i'm one of those people i'm prominent in my community i'm well known i'm always giving back and i thought to myself how can i say that i'm a true leader of this community if i sit back and watch something like this continue to happen so it was like wanda you're just gonna have to walk away from your nice salary your nice comforts of what you're used to you're gonna have to sacrifice yourself and make a difference so instead of being someone that complained which that's not me at all i don't just sit up and complain about anything i'm going to put myself out there so that's exactly what i did so now i'm running for judge when i win i would actually take the bench on january 1st of 2023 which means i can no longer sit as judge von to be but exciting new things coming for the show but what does that mean you get replaced if that happens um in terms of my show yeah well yes and no so i want to give you too much it's going to be fun all right the next part of the what do you call it the the growth of support court with judge fonda be it's going to be exciting all right but the thing is my only thing is it needs to be you oh well you are not yeah if you're the person between the two people it's if it's not you the show is you can't do the show not well i don't know i don't know it's heart well like you can't replace a judge judy like when she goes she goes it's like she's made the show i feel like you've made the show thank you i appreciate that depending on who the person it is you get and where you actually spin it it can be very successful okay and that's where we're headed with that okay so that's why i said i can't tell you too much because it's going to be awesome trust me i will still have some role with the show okay because as a judge i can still consult right like how we're sitting here on the podcast yeah so i can still do the reactions and the educational segment after the fact okay but who will actually be in that role will be a little bit more exciting all right all right see i liked your approach because i felt you were really fair and nice oh yeah and like you weren't demeaning to the people but you were you you said the same things that i was thinking yeah so that's what i liked about it yeah and it's going to be like that the direction that the show will go once i win okay um i think you'll like it still you're gonna say all right this is awesome why didn't i think of that when we were talking on the podcast i think you're gonna like it you just have to stay tuned all right but until then you will get all of me all right we expect it all right absolutely anything else you wanted to bring up or ask us i don't have any other questions just thank you for watching thank you for coming on over here really really nice meeting you nice to meet you too do you like coffee do you both of you like coffee um not as much as i used to when i was in law school when i was studying for the bar i kind of got away from coffee to keep myself from being so jittery got it and so now i drink coffee maybe once or twice a year once or twice a year yeah what about what about your husband he doesn't drink coffee at all at all no he doesn't like it what wow okay well then i wish your day started off right yeah i i was i was uh going to uh bankroll coffee was going to provide you with some complimentary coffee if you would like it so the offer is there or we could gift it to somebody else please gift i would love for a coffee drinker to drink it okay i could give it to you and you could decide who's worthy of it that's a good idea my my mom and my sister both love coffee well thank you so much for coming on really nice meeting you thank you guys for watching pop a sub pop a like yes yes subscribe you want to tell them to subscribe he's like 15 of people don't subscribe definitely like subscribe and share the video okay and tell them to get their free stock down below in the description that's worth all the way up to a thousand dollars when they use the code gram and sign up for public say that what he just said what to say that's it well thank you so much freestyle drop in the comments yeah that's it that's it that's it okay close enough thanks guys i'll see you thanks oh that was so fun